07/08/2011

Bored of the Ironing Board...

Good Evening.

Straight to the point. My ironing board has seen better days. We bought it when we moved into our first place a couple of years ago, and it was the cheapest in the Argos catalogue. Oh how times change :-D

The shameful shot:

So, rather that splurge on a whole new board I've been on the hunt for the perfect cover. Never going to happen. I certainly didn't find a Brabantia jobbie that would do the trick, and some of the nicer ones would be too big due to the board being so cheap. The next logical step was to have a peek at Etsy but by the time you add shipping to the UK things get a bit steep. My budget was ideally around £15, so I decided I''d have a crack at making my own.
I headed to John Lewis, and picked 2 meters of beautiful Tanya Whelan fabric, which was half price and some 4oz flame retardant wadding. Armed with tutorials I found on Pinterest (Oh dear, I think I'm addicted), I set to work...

Materials ready to go (That tubby chap is my pincushion ^_^)

The Board with the old cover removed and set fire to...

I sort of skipped a step here. There are two layers of wadding in there, cut the exact size of the board top. The fabric is good side down, then cut the same shape as the board but with a 4-5in border.

Then I pinned a wide hem around the outside with string in the channel, so I can use this as a drawstring to tighten the cover on the board later.

At the end I left a little gap for the string to hang out so that it can be tied up. I had planned to tie ribbon to the string a little further down, but the knot that was created was HUGE and made a huge lump in the channel. I seriously thought that the knot would stop the string from moving in the channel, and thus stop the drawstring action from working. I had at it with my sewing machine, and removed the pins...

Oooooh...

Voila! One shiny new ironing board cover!

Even though I didn't use ribbon in the drawstring, I wanted a cute little tie off, anyway. Right then, glam, creative bits over-I now have to do the actual ironing. Sad face.